In this thought-provoking video, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the world of Fundie Snark, examining popular YouTube channels and their cultural impacts. They discuss the biases and blind spots of both conservative and progressive content creators, analyze the complexities of LGBTQ+ representation and activism, and explore the ethical implications of online criticism. The couple offers unique insights into the cultural dynamics at play, challenging viewers to think critically about the content they consume and the real-world consequences of online discourse.
[00:00:00]
Simone Collins: I like seeing people who have taken hard cultural stances. Be criticized to see how we might be subject to criticism ourselves and what we may be doing wrong. I really like Fundy Fridays, and I really like Jen but yeah,
Malcolm Collins: she's in as much of a cult
Simone Collins: as the people who she covers. They all come from very strong cultures that have skews and blind spots because of those strong cultures. Not to say that we don't have blind spots either, but still.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and they're insane religious cults. They're the good guys in her insane religious cult. She's the good guy and she's doing what the cult is telling her to do. She should never
Simone Collins: step
Malcolm Collins: back.
Simone Collins: She'd started tongue in cheek that are frills of the channel now. Still speak very much or similar to the small time career preachers that she criticizes.
Her followers call themselves Jenna nights. And they patronize her. And how is that different from being a preacher in the end? Preachers speak to people, they cultivate communities.
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I am so excited to be here [00:01:00] with you today. After a tough day today, it is always nice to be able to come back to doing something that we love, which is these conversations. They are so much better, you've been meditating with me earlier, like they're so much better than a date because they're like recorded and we watch them over and over again, each of us do.
I actually quite enjoy our own YouTube channel. And what I know it's weird but this is the first time I've ever created something that I really like with our books. I don't read them over and over again, but I'm like, Oh, I know I made a fun joke in this one. And I liked the way I constructed it.
But what actually got us on today's topic. Was Simone has always been a big fan of Fundy Snark content. And I have always been a big fan of religious content. And religious content for me includes the de converts and stuff like that. And where our two worlds inter, interlapped recently was Classically Abby.
Being a conservative [00:02:00] woman in today's day and age is not easy. !
Malcolm Collins: So people might not know this, but Classically Abby is Ben Shapiro's sister, and she absolutely spammed YouTube with so many ads a few years ago. If you're on YouTube now and
Simone Collins: you've been on YouTube for years, you know what we're talking
Malcolm Collins: about. You know what this is about. Yeah. You're like, Oh my God.
I remember when I had to watch her. What got me about Classically Abby, and this actually has boosted my ego so much. Classically Abby, we produce videos every weekday. Classically Abby produces one video a week but otherwise similar format to us. She gets about 2. 2k views on an average video.
Whereas, we're generally Between the low 2Ks to 7 or 8K views. On an average day, because, we can look at our statistics. So some of our videos just vastly outperform other ones. Like the old Starship Troopers one is a really high number. The Bears one is at a high number.
But on average, we're getting about 8, 000 views per day. Or about [00:03:00] 1, 300 watch hours a day. So we are, Smoking, classically Abby, smoking her for a daily channel, doing four or five times as well as her weekly channel, which I love because she must have spent millions building that up. And sorry, as to why I love this people might not know, but we have a beef with Ben Shapiro. The first time, we really went viral, he was really derogatory towards us and was like, they're nerds. Why does anyone care what these people have to say? And he has just repeatedly, we have tried to get into events that he's doing or has association with, and we are always blocked, like we are on a blocked, do not talk to list with Ben Shapiro and everyone who talks to Ben Shapiro.
Simone Collins: He doesn't blame
Malcolm Collins: you. I can understand why. We're probably pretty threatening to him that we've actually like grassroots beginning to build up. So Ben Shapiro's thing is he often switches between endeavor movement. It happens to be hot in the conservative space right [00:04:00] now. But I think he would have like when he switched to all the men's rights content and stuff like that, but he doesn't seem to actually have like his own perspective on things.
It's more just like whatever he thinks will get him in the moment clout. And I think he thought it was his sister. So it's not just
Simone Collins: audience capture, it's audience capture hopping.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Audience capture hopping. He is addicted to attention. He tried to help out his sister, which I appreciate to get into the same business, but she's just not very interesting.
I tried to watch some of her videos and I'm like, I can see why nobody's watching these. It's just Conservative TM. You know what I mean? Like just basic takes. Yeah. Just the most basic of basic takes
Basic camp. There's no, yeah. The most interesting, least interesting takes, but I want to talk about this phenomenon with Fundy Snark.
I want to talk about the various Fundy
Simone Collins: Snark is people with smart, snarky commentary on fundamentalist religions and people who are religious fundamentalists, just in case you're not familiar with it.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And [00:05:00] it's very different from I, I think the reason why we would provide an interesting insight into Fundysnark is we are people who watch a lot of Fundysnark content for different reasons.
Like I'm interested in how different cultures view other cultural groups and talk about other cultural groups. I think you just like the Or
Simone Collins: I like seeing people who have taken hard cultural stances. Be criticized to see how we might be subject to criticism ourselves and what we may be doing wrong.
Because my favorite content is it turns out that I am wrong about something and I should change course. And Snar helps me because it is, it does all of that. But yes, it is also snarky gossip and I don't mind that. Don't mind it.
Malcolm Collins: Do episode on Bridger and I'm like, our audience is like 90% male now.
It used to be very interesting
Simone Collins: prenatal argument around Bridger Tin though. And we were discussing this with one of the podcast listeners. Who is in a very progressive [00:06:00] part of the Bay Area in Berkeley. And there was a lot of people who are very progressively coded at least. But who also love Bridgerton, which is an insanely pronatalist TV show on Netflix that, large families, it's all about marrying and having kids.
And if
Malcolm Collins: our viewers want us to do the Bridgerton episode, let us know. But back to the topic. So we're going to be talking about a. A few different channels as examples of Fundy Snark content. And what I find very interesting is the differentiation between the channels in terms of like my perspective on whether or not they are fundamental goods for the world or fundamental negatives for the world.
Because some of these channels are really just like in a cult, basically, like the far progressive movement has essentially become a cult, we call it the urban monoculture and our show a lot, stuff like that. But then there's some people who would just seem to be genuinely secular. One of the things I find most interesting about [00:07:00] Fundy Snark content is the people who were raised atheist and then turned to Fundy Often seem to be the most in a cult of the communities.
And cult like, and the people who were raised Mormon and then turned to Fundy snark often are the most like kind and open minded and genuinely engaging. So
Simone Collins: just there, which I'm sure you're probably going to agree with.
Malcolm Collins: Let's list the channels we're talking about and then hear your hypothesis.
So the channels that we actively watch, so people know what we're talking about here, Is Zelf on the shelf. What was the other Mormon one
Simone Collins: Jordan and McKay.
Malcolm Collins: And then Fundy snark is a big one. And then Rachel Fundy Friday.
Yeah. So the subreddit is called Fundy Snark. I would say that like, when the groups that I say are like Fundy fairly benign are, or even quite positive. I think the two Mormon couples we mentioned was the highest tier being Zelf on the Shelf. I just [00:08:00] see Zelf on the Shelf as being really compassionate about the people that they are targeting to the extent where recently they've done a number of episodes where they are interacting with the girl defined couple because this couple is open to interacting with them, given how open and kind they are towards these individuals.
Whereas I put the pedestal of hate content probably Rachel Oates and then slightly below her is Fundie Fridays where these people are really just a progressive version of Libs of TikTok but not as entertaining. So I'll explain what I mean by that. Libs of TikTok, for people who don't know, they take the most extreme people in the pro this, Urban monoculture cult that we talk about and they showcase their behavior and then they attempt to spin sort of a narrative or a perspective where this behavior is actually pretty mainstream in the progressive movement.
But like most progressive though, this isn't mainstream. This is some wacky extremist. Whereas you see a similar thing. [00:09:00] In, for example, Fundie Fridays where they will say things like there was in a Duggar video recently where she was saying basically all Republicans are bad and represent a threat to the LGBT community.
And even though, more than 50 percent of Republican voters these days support gay marriage. Like it's wild that. These positions they're taking, and we'll get more into the wildness of this and the downstream negative repercussions of the positions the extremists are taking.
But yeah, so I want to hear your theory. Why do you think the Mormons are
Simone Collins: it's not just ex Mormons. So I think that the reason why born fairly atheist and then remained atheist have the most skewed Fundy snark commentary is because they are of the greatest religious fervor. So we've seen that, for example, in polygenic risk scores and generally religiosity appears to be heritable.
People seem to have that. But religiosity doesn't mean like you [00:10:00] inherit being a Baptist. It means you inherit a kind of religious fervor or tendency to be quite religious. For example, I have family members who used to be a member of the Rajneesh and then went like pretty conservative Christian.
They just jumped from one harder culture to another harder culture instead of just being in a soft culture. So it seems like people tend To gravitate towards hard and soft cultures. And I think that people who are very vehement critics of other cultures are demonstrating the personality tendencies, the behavioral tendencies that drive one to religiosity in the first place, they just happen to be bowing down to the cult or religion.
of progressivism, of woke, of whatever you want to call it, the urban monoculture. The people who deconvert from hard religions are naturally those whose behavioral and personality characteristics are less hardline on any sort of culture. They don't gravitate toward that very hard culture. [00:11:00] And so they let it go.
And it's they're more likely to spin out of hard religions because they just don't have a very high religiosity kind of profile. So that's why I think those who have de converted tend to be a little bit more tempered and reasonable. Whereas those who never de converted from their culture and have yet devoted their careers to a great extent to this kind of commentary and criticism are more vehement.
What do you think?
Malcolm Collins: I disagree on that. I suspect it's most cultural and genetic. Because this is something we just see more generally. Something that we've talked about on our channel before is a lot of people think like they have left the culture they were born in, but that one culturally just isn't true.
And you see the downstream effects of being outside of a hard cultural group, like a religious cultural group doesn't really show up in individual personality until about deconversion. And the Mormons who have deconverted were still raised was [00:12:00] in Mormon culture. I also think that there's genetic effects here.
When I engage with both Mormons and ex Mormons, both groups I find just and again, that's probably a cross between culture and genetics, unusually pleasant people to interact with. They are just delightful people. Wonderful. Alice Spark did a good thing on this. They are just uniquely delightful people.
, oh, lost your mortgage, pay 10, 000. Oh, no. Hey, it's Gary. Gary. Great to see you. How are you? Oh boy, who is the best mom in the world?
Malcolm Collins: When this is actually an interesting thing where a lot of people see us, you and me and they're like, you guys look like brother and sister. You look like no one I've ever seen before. You act so weird. And we're like, you look at the Puritan spotting checklist that Scott Alexander wrote.
And we were like off the charts on this. You look at the old Calvinists of the cultural [00:13:00] group, which both of us come from, I'll put it on the screen here. Pictures of Calvinist women. They look all like Simone's sisters. Or you can put up like famous Calvinist group that I was in from the group that like founded the Free State of Jones, the John Brown group.
You put like a picture of John Brown and you're like, both behaviorally and physiologically, This looks like Malcolm. The crazy We need to find
Simone Collins: that painting where there's some concerned people behind him
Malcolm Collins: So it's more just that we're part of a ethno cultural group that had a pretty isolated gene pool for a long time that you're just not as familiar with, but it doesn't mean that we aren't also impacted by that.
So I suspect that's what we're seeing was the Mormon community is one, a culture, which actually does a pretty good job of creating, Good action at the end of it. And this is something I've seen. So in our Wikipedia article about us there is a section on it where it quotes one of my quotes and I'm actually quite glad they quoted this because they were talking about my relationship with my parents.
And I was like, I had a very hard childhood. I [00:14:00] don't know how much of it was their fault. I grew up troubled teen industry, everything like that, which I was sent to by court order, not by my parents. And But what I said is if a parent raises good children, like children who are happy with themselves, happy with their lives and successful by any secular metric, how can I say that they were a bad parent?
And the Platt family the Fundy Snark did a series of videos that all of their kids seem so healthy and happy and well adjusted. And yet they want to attack this family. And I'm like, do you see what's coming out of progressive culture? Like it is horrible right now. These people are coming out like mentally broken individuals.
Sorry, I should be clear. I don't mean this objective claim. I mean, This objectively. Pew found that over half of all white liberal women under the age of 30, have a mental health issue and just across the board. Among this ultra progressive cultural group, as you can see here, there's just [00:15:00] much higher rates of mental health issues. Then there is in the conservative group and this is why I'm.
So unpersuaded when ultra Progressive's they're like, why don't you just raise children the way that we raise children? Because I'm like, anyone can see whether I'm looking at the data or I'm just looking at the people. I know that whatever the thing is that your doing with your kids, it's leading them to be mentally tattered as adults.
Whereas I just don't see the same thing coming out of conservative households. Even when these kids. Grow up in childhoods that Progressive's claim or love to mentally masturbate about. Mentally breaking these kids or causing them to need therapy when they're adults or causing et cetera. But really they're just saying, oh, These are hooks.
We could use to pull them out of their culture. Not that they're actually pointing out things that are genuinely damaging to these kids.
Malcolm Collins: And another really interesting thing I see from a cultural [00:16:00] perspective, like the more on the cult spectrum, they are these individuals, whenever they see somebody acting non culturally normative, their perspective is always to say, Get out there and go to a therapist and after we've talked about, if you look at modern therapy and you can watch our videos on has therapy become a cult?
This is an industry I was trained in. They do a bunch of stuff that we were explicitly weren't against doing in the early 2000s. They do a bunch of stuff like trauma therapy is what I call it, which is really they've taken the concept of thetans and they've just inserted the word trauma and it is much closer to Scientology from the nineties and eighties than it is to what therapy Was supposed to be like academic therapy was and this
Simone Collins: isn't just on Fundie snark channels either.
What's really interesting is across YouTube channels and podcasts. I hear this coming up a lot like when someone is in, especially the therapy cult, it shows up. And they talk a lot about their prescriptions. They talk a lot about their, therapists [00:17:00] and how it's very important that people get therapy.
Just how important. Because
Malcolm Collins: therapy is for the urban monoculture, it's like a priest in induction cast. And so when they want to convert somebody they send them to therapists because therapists do two things really well. This cult version of therapy that really. There's more similar to Scientology from the 80s is they do a very good job of breaking an individual's connections to their birth culture and family and convincing them that all of this stuff that if it's not culturally normative, if it's not part of the urban monoculture, it is trauma.
It is abuse, and they use that to break them from these groups, which cults always do. The first thing a cult always does is try to break you from your family. But they also do a very good job of creating this sort of original thin narrative around the concept of trauma. Which, historically we would have known a therapist's job is to help somebody emotionally heal, not to create dependency.
In theory. In theory. The real job is to make money and you can make more money by creating [00:18:00] dependency, which is why this model of therapy outcompeted.
So do you want to go further on any of these topics before I get into probably the most offensive part of the video?
Simone Collins: So yeah, let's see. I think people watch Fundy Snark for a bunch of different reasons and some it's just cultural reinforcement. Some it's just the snark. I think a lot of it, which is important and it shouldn't be understated is that people who come from a soft culture and just don't really have a lot of firmly held beliefs or traditions or restraints on their lives feel, and I felt this a lot when I was a kid, which is why I'm bringing it up this strange fascination with people who come from weird cultures.
And have a structured life and have these structured beliefs. And they may say that they hate these people these like religious fundamentalists, but they will watch Fundie Snark, they will follow these people on Instagram and on across other channels and watch and maybe mock their channels. [00:19:00] But I think maybe even subconsciously.
There's a lot of watching that goes on just because it, there's something compelling and comforting about it. It's evil. Of course, they've got it wrong. Of course, whatever. That's what they're thinking, but there's something kind of comforting and they're going through it and you can parasocially experience that lifestyle without actually living it and without actually feeling like you're condoning it because these are snark channels.
So you're making fun of them. You're not supporting them. You're making fun of them. It's okay. And I think that's what a lot of this is about. I also really the more vehement, and I, you would say like unfair channels like Fundie Fridays, because they provide such a stark contrast of the cultural extremes that we've arrived at today.
Because as you say, like you're cherry picking extremes. This is the libs of Tik TOK of the flipped version. It's it, the upside down version, and it really helps you see what the differences are. Like it lays them bare. If someone needs to know what the differences between, [00:20:00] weird conservatism and weird progressivism are, watch one of these channels and you'll know where they fall on marriage, on child rearing, on therapy, on trauma, on pets, on how to deal with social media, on jobs, on, Really anything because they talk about everything.
So I think that's really cool. You can learn a lot.
Malcolm Collins: So now we'll get the more offensive stuff. So I'm gonna get to two fairly offensive points. One is Rachel, I think it's the most extreme version of the urban monoculture just join us. Is her arguments, because you see this across videos, and I see this across Fundysnark, of high fertility families, and she was actually talking about the other Cullens family, the more famous Cullens family than us which is this really delightful interracial couple
Carissa using her kids to push her anti choice pro natalist beliefs, and this is a really sickening video.
Malcolm Collins: I, The more I learn about them and see people criticizing them, because I find that you can learn about somebody through the individuals who criticize them [00:21:00] really well, because I'm like, okay, if this is the worst, you could air about them.
They seem like delightful people. And very well reasoned individuals. One of the core complaints they had very similar to us was like, It'd be better off to have, quote unquote, higher quality, fewer kids, other than more kids. And she has a full argument about this and she's just this is like an obviously true thing.
In her next line She said don't stop because they can't be in every extracurricular activity and sport Are we really gonna base the value of our children's lives on how many activities they can be in?
I know Carissa would disagree with me, but I honestly think it's better to help one child really flourish and reach their potential than it is to birth five children who are struggling and barely getting by
surely. I feel like so many people like Carissa like to use the excuse of well, we're scraping by so that's enough right? And I just feel like As someone who grew up like that, it's not enough.
So what Rachel is saying [00:22:00] here. Is, she doesn't want these children to exist because they will live childhoods. That are equivalent to her own childhood. Is she really saying that she would be better off not existing. That her childhood was so bad that her life just shouldn't be here because that's what she is denying.
Other people. With this argument, a life equivalent to her own life by her own argument. And I really don't think that that's the perspective she's taking. She genuinely, , doesn't consider that she is denying an entire human being who will live an entire life. The optionality of existence.
Just so another child can get more extracurriculars or have a marginally more financial security, which to me is. Obviously. Unethical, ,
But this is the standard moral [00:23:00] framework that progressive they're using right now.
Malcolm Collins: And I'm like, that is like such a, like morally horrifying position to me. And I think it's why the urban monoculture will ultimately die is this belief that human life is more It doesn't matter until conception. And it's just so bizarre to me because it's like this weird, like ultra Catholic belief, but also urban monoculture belief, which is to say that Oh yeah.
I know my kids, but if I could marginally and marginally is really what it is here. Improve the lives of my other kids, and adopt parenting practices that are more normalized for the urban monoculture perspective. By raising my kids more. In line with their value system, which requires fewer kids, really, all this, no corporal punishment.
Just you can't if you have multiple boys, you can't hold them all down. There's no corporal punishment system requires you being able to body check a kid stay on top of them, basically, if they're doing something really bad. And if you have other kids that's not an option, right?
Yeah. [00:24:00] And they're like, yeah then you just shouldn't have more, right? And so it's like, why do they take these bizarre perspectives? As we've argued, it's because their culture evolved these perspectives, because it uses them not for actual child rearing. People in their culture almost never have kids, or at least at above repopulation rate, they never have kids.
And so for that reason, they don't really need to be good at child rearing themselves. They just need to be good at implanting trauma. around the perception of trauma. And as we pointed out on studies of trauma that the effects of trauma are more correlated with a belief of trauma than actually having trauma.
There was that great study done that showed when you correlate people who say how much trauma they have, it correlates with their level of psychological dysfunction. However, if you then go back to their childhoods and you look for court records of this and stuff like this, where you can find actual proof of trauma, even in people who say that they're not traumatized The no effects and you find proof that there wasn't actually trauma and people who say that they're traumatized, you find big effects.
So implanting trauma is actually really important in creating this [00:25:00] dependency on the urban monoculture. But then I think we have the worst case of this, which has been the appropriation of the gay community. Which I think we see on Funday Fridays. I'm gonna, Fundy Fridays, which sees herself, and I don't think that she's doing any of this maliciously.
I just think it's part of the cult that she's in, and she doesn't understand the negative repercussions of her actions. Yeah, I think we should make
Simone Collins: it clear I really like Fundy Fridays, and I really like Jen who's the, Main host of Funny Fridays along with her husband. But yeah, she's in a, she's in a very different culture and she has would
Malcolm Collins: you go she's not just in a different culture.
She's basically in a cult and the cult has done some really questionable things. She's in as much of a cult
Simone Collins: as the people who she covers. They all come from very strong cultures that have skews and blind spots because of those strong cultures. Not to say that we don't have blind spots either, but still.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, everybody has their cultural blind spots, but one that like just, ugh, it grades my nails when I'm watching her channel is she really sees herself as like a spokesperson [00:26:00] for queer people and queer culture. And I will put a picture on screen of her and her husband, and people might be like, how dare you question this aspect of her identity?
And I'm like, look, I'm going to play a video of her. playing race detective with the people she's criticizing,
I'm not sure the ethnicity of her mother, and I swear I have a reason to bring this up, because I am aware that it is problematic for me as a white person to ask where are you from?!
I'm only bringing it up because Kat identifies as Latina
I know a lot of you guys, but I know a lot of you guys don't know that I am myself a proud Latina. I was born in Mexico in Montemorelos, Nuevo Leon. I know that a lot of people just assume that I'm white. Because I was not lucky enough to inherit my mom's really beautiful dark skin. But I do have her dark eyes.
But I think that it's important too that people know that us Latinas come in all different shades of brown. Trying to, call her something that she's not, but I have to report on what I [00:27:00] think And so I'm the same way. I just got a call it, like I see it. And, , given that she is the type of person who, when she is. Investigating the way somebody else is approaching life. She would say, well, you don't look Latina to me. Therefore, I am going to . , doubt your Latina identity, even though you personally identify as Latina. , I'm just saying the same thing.
What you don't look like this to me. And so while I personally wouldn't doubt somebody's racial heritage or identity, just because they didn't look a certain way. I can see the logic in doing it, because if you don't look sufficiently Latina, then you're not going to experience the racism that goes along with being Latina. And therefore it's not good for you to use that identity as a cover for your words and actions. , but this is all would apply equally well to the accusation. I am making here To be more specific. There is a big difference between being an oppressed minority [00:28:00] and identifying as an oppressed minority.
If. The thing that grants you inclusion into that minority group. Is not causing you to be oppressed in the way that other members of that group are being oppressed. The oppressive minority status is nothing but a benefit to you because you get to feel like a victim and identify as a victim without any of the negative consequences of actually being a victim.
He doesn't need one. Bob, we don't want to know. The gender of the baby. We don't want to know the sex, and you know that. I don't know your gender. I don't know Candace's. I don't know mine. You don't know my gender?
I don't. Do I look like a woman? I don't know what a woman looks like. What are you? You're a detective? A gender detective? No, I just Lifting up skirts and pulling down pants and just getting in there with your magnifying glass?
By the way, if you're wondering. Y gen identifies as queer. Like what specific type of queer she thinks she is? If someone has watched a, literally all of her videos are about all of her videos and she says she can't remember her ever [00:29:00] saying. , I did some research on the side and the answer that I seem to pull is that she calls her if she considers herself and her husband considers. Himself nonbinary.
, and their pronouns are her and they, and him and they, I believe. , I, you know, I don't want to ever mis-gender someone because I don't particularly, I like, it's not important to me. And it really hurts some people. , So, you know, why would I do something that hurts somebody? If there's no benefit to me? , So that's, that's where I think she comes into the queer community. But the article where I pulled that from. Unfortunately, , was really confusingly worded. And I'm not sure if those pronouns or that gender identity claim was referring to them or another influencer couple, it was interviewing alongside them.
Malcolm Collins: She does the exact same thing. This is not me acting outside of the rules that she has set for herself. And I haven't done this with anyone else. I'm only doing it because I know that she's okay with playing like race detective and stuff [00:30:00] like this.
But I look at her and her husband and I'm like, okay, we're going to do this. So here's the core problem with this leftist idea that you shouldn't put any gating on the queer community and that if you have dyed hair and snogged a girl in college that you're queer because you don't have to deal with the consequences because you don't, to everyone else in the world, you look like a straight couple.
You don't have to deal with the consequences of the shit that you are saying in terms of how that affects the queer community. When you get out there. And you as somebody who's really just and we could identify as queer if we wanted to because we are agender, as I constantly point out by the LGBT community, like extremist cult standards, not like real gays and lesbians who, depending on the study you're looking at 45 percent of gay men voted for Trump, or it might be a third of gay men in another study.
You're like, okay, you've got to go for the smaller study because then people believe it more. But you're looking at a pretty big percentage of these people who actually have to live with this. People are like, [00:31:00] why are so many like actually gay people have to live with the fact that they're gay who have to live with the fact that they're trans, right?
And people around them can see this, support the Republican policies. It's because what are the the anti gay policies? Trans, anti LGBT, quote unquote, Republican policies. There's shit like trans people shouldn't be on sports teams, and trans people shouldn't be using, bathrooms that don't confirm with their birth gender.
And for a lot of people who can't escape this gay and trans identity, they support that stuff. And in Fundie Friday, this is not me mis misinterpreting the shit that they're saying. They have all Full video just on these two topics. It's first of all, anyone who's I think sane and being honest knows that these people shouldn't be on sports teams.
It's blatantly unfair. And the fact that it's blatantly unfair causes blowback to real trans people.
If you're a real transperson, you infinitely would prefer not having a society that has a reason to hate you and see you as a cheater. [00:32:00] Over getting to participate in the sports team you want to participate in. . Like there are not people out there, killing themselves because they're not getting to play on the right swimming team.
All right. Lots of kids go through their childhood without any option to play intermural sports. And I don't see any leftist freaking out that these kids are going to end up killing themselves. This is. In sane. And these are positions that. You would only argue if you didn't have to deal with the consequences that are going to come from creating these sorts of carve-outs because of course, as soon as you create a carve out of this, of course, some people are going to abuse it. As soon as you create a carve-out around, , a certain segment of society where it's harder to call them out for things, of course, some aggressive male cis-gender sex PEs are going to try to take . , advantage of it. And it's pretty easy to see that this is happening. A trans person who desperately [00:33:00] wants to be seen as a particular gender identity is not going to win their body. Looks nothing like that. Gender identity. Go and participate in a sport where everyone is going to be furious in them, because it seems that they have some huge advantage over everyone else, which they, they obviously do. And then walk around the. Locker room. Like Leah Thomas , swinging their penis about and in front of full view in front of everyone, , they're not going to do that.
And they would want laws in place that prevent people from doing that while calling themselves trans.
And the blow back that that causes the trans community is infinitely worse than any benefit they get from these. Ridiculous positions. The laws that Republicans are fighting for. That prevent people from doing things like this, using a trans identity as a shield. Ultimately or most beneficial out of [00:34:00] everyone, they benefit in society. To real trans individuals. If you go to somebody who isn't just in this far lefty, Colt, and they're like, would you rather, live in a world in which you don't get to participate in the sports team you want to participate in? But. You don't have to deal with aggressive CIS male sex PEs walking around naked in women's locker rooms while calling themselves trans and you facing the blowback for that or one in which. , you do have to deal with with that and your meager reward. Is getting to participate in the sports teams.
You want to participate in, , anybody who is actually like, I just want society to see me for my gender is going to be like, obviously the second. And these individuals are okay with holding these sorts of positions because they don't have to personally deal with the blow back because they don't have to walk around every day looking like. A trans person looking like queer people, holding hands with somebody of the [00:35:00] same gender it's themselves. And this is why these sorts of opt in queer identities. If anything for them? It's a benefit because now they look even more like a victim when they're opting into the victim identity that they can just throw off whenever they're in public.
Malcolm Collins: Wasn't there a South
Simone Collins: Park episode on this?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, there was a South Park. And I'll include a clip from it here because they know it does
Oh, yeah, I'm ready. David. There are just so many amazing women athletes out here today now, this is the first year that a trans woman is in the competition. How do you feel about that? . I feel honored to be a part of history.
I have a lot of incredible trans friends who are athletes, and so we're all inspired. Uh huh. And have you actually ever met Heather Swanson? She's not exactly your average trans athlete. Well, what is an average trans athlete?
Honestly, I find that kind of bigoted, David. Okay, miss Swanson, how does it feel to be competing today? I can't tell you how free I feel now that I've started identifying as a [00:36:00] woman. I'm ready to smash the other girls. Uh, good luck, Heather. Ha ha, luck is for dudes! .
Malcolm Collins: or this, he repeats the, he's oh, it's a complete myth that trans people ever or really CIS males ever use.
Trans bathroom protections to assault women. And it's no, even the studies that are trying to argue it's a miss, say it does happen. They just argue it in, I'll put up a statistic on screen here, like a study on screen. They just say it doesn't happen more when this law is out there. And it's do you really think you could get a study published that showed that it happened more when this law was out there?
like, if you publish that study at any mainstream us university. , you would be at risk of being fired, but I mean, very obviously. And you would likely be at personal risk walking around campus. , why would somebody take that risk? You know, I, it, the, the benefit they would be so potentially low from most individual academic perspectives when considering [00:37:00] their own livelihoods and people who don't understand this type of pressure that academics are under, I think often willfully don't understand it or ignore it. , and ignore just how extreme the college activists often are.
Malcolm Collins: Whether it's lesbians who are like, I feel really uncomfortable because a lot of, transitioned women who now identify as lesbians some of these.
are cis men, cis pes, who wanted to get into lesbian dating apps, and pester women, and they found a cultural cheat code to do that, and if you're like, no, a creepy cis male would never do this of course they would, we all know that guy and yet now, when lesbians try to create Lesbians who actually have to deal with the fact that they're actually lesbians and only want to date people who present phenotypically female.
Which, this person clearly isn't they have to deal with this, like in Australia, you might not know this, but there's a case recently where the owner of a dating app is being sued because the dating app used AI to determine if the face of the person who is signing up looked more phenotypically [00:38:00] female.
So this was a dating app that, by the way, let people in if they were
Simone Collins: As long as you can in passed. I think that's great.
Malcolm Collins: But they didn't pass. They were like, no, because this is for people who prefer phenotypical females, that women cannot find these private spaces, that lesbians can't find these private spaces anymore.
It's actually a problem for individuals who have a phenotypical female preference. And you are saying. in the legislation that you're pushing that they shouldn't be allowed. Like you are dismissing the people who have to actually live with the fact that they are same sex attracted. Or, you get the push down of this in school, which happened to us recently.
So I'll read a quote here because this happened just right next door to us. Where a Pennsylvania girl spoke out, this was like a 13 year old, by the way spoke out furiously against teachers and administrators at her school for a transgender student savagely beating her friend using a Stanley cup.
The incident took place at Pembroke. I'm sorry. Using a Stanley cup. Yeah, you're using a big metal thing. Yeah, you could cut a bitch with it,
Simone Collins: I'm sure.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. When the 13 year [00:39:00] old blindsided a 12 year old female victim in the school cafeteria using a cup, hitting her on the head and creating an open wound, the unidentified student had to be hospitalized and get staples to close the cuts in her head before undertaking concussion protocol, according to police.
However, as one student said, Not only did she warn the teachers the bullying student had a quote unquote hit list, but she added that she was the next one to get assaulted and that the student had to be stopped. You could have stopped it, the girl said. It was five hours from when I told you it was going to happen.
I don't get how you couldn't have stopped that. She added that the girl was bullying her and targeting her every day at lunch. And you might be wondering like, how are, is somebody getting away with this? And it's because they're afraid. If they in this, if they apply any disciplinary measures to people of this protected category in our society, if they say, no, you can't go in the restrooms, no, you can't, that this is going to cause a apoplectic freak out from this [00:40:00] extremist cult, right?
That's if they had come
Simone Collins: in and said, you appear to be bullying, et cetera, that person. Yeah, we're like normal trans people
Malcolm Collins: who are like historically, like actually born with a different gender presentation . They just want to live their lives like they're not into all of this.
They understand that they have what is essentially a fairly rare condition and that all of society cannot adopt to their condition and that yes, that might mean that they have to use restrooms at home more often or they have to feel uncomfortable sometimes the same way extremely fat people do on airplanes.
Like I don't love that. fat people have to feel uncomfortable or buy two seats on an airplane, but realistically we can't adopt all airplanes . And that's the truth of trans people as well. They know that when society begins to bend over backwards in ways, because of course, if you create this protected class, if you say any.
Male looking individual who says they identify as a woman can now use women's bathrooms. [00:41:00] Some sex pests are going to take advantage of that. They don't want that happening because that has blowback on them who can't hide. But when you're one of these individuals like Fundy Stark who can just say, Oh, I'm gender whatever, but not looking away where you can't escape the blowback that you are causing for this community. That is genuinely bad for society and bad for the real LGBTQ community. And you could look at people like us who could claim to be trans, because we are agender, which is genderqueer, which would qualify as a gen for, sorry, for normal people who don't know what agender is. That basically means I don't feel a strong connection to my gender.
If I woke up tomorrow, a woman, I wouldn't care. If Simone woke up tomorrow, a man, she wouldn't care. We just don't. And Simone's also fairly asexual. Would you identify as asexual? I
Simone Collins: identify as asexual, but gay for Malcolm. Gay for Malcolm, yes. I am
Malcolm Collins: gay for Malcolm. We would fall squarely in the queer community.
But I [00:42:00] don't say I'm in the queer community. I just try to protect them because I view, if I am not a gender presentation that causes me to be attacked in my daily life, it's very much a blackface thing to me. It's a stolen valor thing. It's gross. It's like walking around. Yeah. Like I don't walk around telling
Simone Collins: people that I have an autism diagnosis because I don't think I need or deserve the extra help.
I could play that card probably technically. I have a technical diagnosis. I could pull out the paperwork. I could probably get some special services in some cases, but I'm not going to do that because I've learned to cope. And I think that the resources that should be expended on people who need help should be saved for those people.
Malcolm Collins: This is why when we're looking at statistics on voting records to find out like the way these communities actually are, I look at like gay males, for example, instead of general LGBT statistics, because if you look at general LGBT statistics, 14% vote Republican, only 14%, it's not the [00:43:00] 45 or one third that you see in other studies of when it's just gay men, because people like this couple who to me, Or a straight heterosexual couple in terms of how they present to society.
Except for like the dyed hair, or just identifying into this queer definition and then polluting the statistics while also causing a blow back on the real queer community from my perspective.
And I think What blow back do you
Simone Collins: think they're causing?
Malcolm Collins: You can actually see it in the statistics, which is support for the queer community has been declining in recent years.
Because of people like this, who are saying you cannot be queer supportive and Republican. How are many people going to take that? Oh shit. And I would actually argue the opposite. I would say you can't be queer supportive in a Democrat because they're supporting the sex pests who are blowing back incredible negative feelings towards.
The real trans individuals, the real, just born, attracted to the same sex [00:44:00] individuals. And because they are taking this position, they are forcing people on the other side to take the opposite position. And they are, Causing identity wise, Oh, being Republican means I am anti gay.
They are establishing that as a cultural norm, even though by the statistics, it's not being true. More than half of Republicans, even when you're talking about older Republicans, you're looking at 65, percent of you're talking about young Republicans, but even older Republicans, more than half still support same sex marriage.
This is just. It's just nonsense at this point. They're making up a fantasy world that makes them feel like good guys when they are not good guys and they are causing the very harassment that they claim to be fighting against.
Simone Collins: One thing I wonder is how many people watching All Fundy snark channels, including the more moderate ones of Deconverted Mormons, for example, come from the [00:45:00] enemy's field, as it were are similar to me, somewhat conservative, not agreeing with everything, all the criticism, but just enjoying it and similar to those who are super progressive, but who follow the accounts of these conservative influencers, because they just.
Kind of find it interesting. Do you think that there's a decent number of conservatives and Religious fundamentalists who watch these channels
Malcolm Collins: or are
Simone Collins: we
Malcolm Collins: unusual? I don't think so. That would be like asking, are there a decent number of people in this far, urban monoculture cult that watch lives of Tik TOK, I really don't think that many people cross the border that much, but I guess we'll hear from our audience.
Cause I imagine our audience is fairly
Simone Collins: audience snark. I
Malcolm Collins: don't. Yeah, we'll see if they like Fundysnark as much. And these people will eventually be covering us. We've actually reached out to them because we're open to working with anyone who covers us, even if it's in a negative context. We're always open to interviews.
We're always open to talk. I believe that the light of truce destroys evil. most [00:46:00] effectively. And I think that when people intentionally don't engage with us and we've reached out to Fundie Start, for example, by the way, to do videos. Fundie Fridays, Jen, you mean. Fundie Friday, yeah. And some of the other people we've reached out to we are always open to do videos with people who are ideologically different from us because we think a genuinely ideologically diverse community, not diverse TM, i.
e. the approved ideologies by the urban monoculture, but actually diverse community. Is the strongest community for our country.
Simone Collins: And I think that Jen of Fundie Fridays comes from a good place and genuinely cares for these people. Like sometimes bad things happen to the people that she covers and she.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, no, absolutely. I, no I see her very much the way that I see some of the people she covers.
Simone Collins: Yeah, no from a, an extremist position in the culture. That's why I hold my stance that my hypothesis is that she is of the same heart culture profile. As the religious fundamentalists that she covers just happens to be wearing a different team's [00:47:00] colors and so she has no.
Malcolm Collins: And yeah, and they're insane religious cults. They're the good guys in her insane religious cult. She's the good guy and she's doing what the cult is telling her to do. She should never
Simone Collins: step
Malcolm Collins: back.
Simone Collins: She'd started tongue in cheek that are frills of the channel now. Still speak very much or similar to the small time career preachers that she criticizes.
Her followers call themselves Jenna nights. And they patronize her. And how is that different from being a preacher in the end? Preachers speak to people, they cultivate communities. They have. Some merch sometimes, there's a, oh vomit. There's just a lot of parallels.
And so I just, I think that one, one thing is fun is it's just like watching a little flame war. Between preachers. And yeah I would just say like to anyone watching this, don't think we think she's not well meaning. We just no.
Malcolm Collins: But I think that most of the people she criticizes are well meaning.
Simone Collins: I agree. And then yes, I do agree that the stance of saying that you are, that you stand for a queer [00:48:00] community when you aren't necessarily like subject to the black faith. Not exactly. There's no rule saying you can't say you're queer. We can say we're queer if we want to, and we have every right to say that we're queer.
No, we
Malcolm Collins: can say we're queer and we would be right to say we're queer if we wanted to, but I don't believe in this identifying with a community when you are not subject to these struggles in the same way that she would criticize people on her show. As like the woman where she was doing the is she really this race thing?
She's trying to figure out if she had a right to call herself Latina because she didn't look Latina. And that's exactly what we're saying. Do you have a right to call yourself queer and claim the struggles of that community when you don't look queer, when you look like you're in a heterosexual marriage?
And there's a lot of stuff within the queer community where it used to be like when you get married, it doesn't mean you're no longer bi. It's yeah, but you're no longer functionally undergoing the. Struggles that are unique to by people in our current society it does mean [00:49:00] That you are not a marginalized community member anymore from the perspective of your lived experience in terms of how that community is dealing with struggles and so You no longer have to deal with the blowback of your extremist actions, like saying, Oh yeah, trans people should be allowed on women's sports teams.
When that's obviously ridiculous.
Simone Collins: I love you.
Malcolm Collins: I love you, Simone.
Simone Collins: I love you too. I love how you
Malcolm Collins: always try to see the best in people. You are a genuinely good person. And I think that, as we often say righteousness isn't determined by an intention to be a good person because almost everyone intends to be a good person. It's determined by how realistic in terms of the actual like downstream effects your view of reality is like the more educated you are.
On what reality actually is in the less you are [00:50:00] part of just one ideological tribe, the better. And I, we see with her channel, like in one video, she was, lauding communism, for example, like maybe one day there'll be a full communist. She said as a good thing. And I just personally, as somebody who values pragmatism and like the way things actually work when tried to be a person who loves communism is just to say, I am okay with, in exchange for good boy points, i.
e., thinking of myself as a good person and having other people see me as a good person, the painful and slow deaths of millions of people, starting often with the minority populations and the most disenfranchised in a society, which is what actually happens when communists come into power.
Simone Collins: But. As I learned from Lemon Month, our holiday in which we engage with subjects we find offensive, I have learned that real communism has not been tried. Okay? It is a post singularity sci fi world. That is what communism is. That's what it always was. And it, the big problem with [00:51:00] communism is that people are trying it now when we literally don't have the technology.
We could
Malcolm Collins: do a whole episode on this, but I just want to explain the point for people who don't know what she said here.
Simone Collins: She's arguing about the early days.
Malcolm Collins: Communism, I don't believe that's what she's arguing for, said that communism can only be tried once we're in a post scarcity environment. And so some communists are now arguing yeah, real communism has never been tried definitionally because we're not in a post scarcity environment.
But if somebody is fighting for communism today, because we don't have the technology to create a genuinely That's true. If you're fighting for communism
Simone Collins: today, you should shut your mouth because you should be fighting. For AGI and super intelligence that is aligned with human flourishing, because that is what will herald in true communism.
Yes. So you really have to be like either like a government fascist with a, like AI department, or you have to be A huge capitalist and raised tons of money to do private AI development.
This is actually something I've noticed more broadly [00:52:00] between the leftist rightist divide within the current political environment, not the political environment of the nineties, which is what modern leftists often like to pretend. That we are still fighting, but in the current environment, , what it really is.
It's do you actually care about solving a problem? Are you looking for good boy points? So you look at something like the leftist myth that there is a rightest. It's just insane that there's a significant racist base among the right wing. , and, and I will beat this until the lions come home. , 5 38 polling, very mainstream Nate, silver until Obama was elected more white Democrats and white Republicans said they would not vote for a black president. , and even now the difference in racist attitudes between the two parties basis. Is marginal.
And when you look at the actual effects that the two parties policies have on racial disparity, You get more of it from the left. When a left wing government has been in power in [00:53:00] the United States, any region for a period, the IQ scores and incomes. Of both black and Hispanic populations are more distant from the local white population than when Republicans have been in power.
And it's because these systems that they put in place. , you know, affirmative action, everything like that. They are performative good boy point systems, but they make the underlying problems worse. And I think that that's the core difference between right it's and left us in the modern sense. It's we'll use sacrifice your public image to attempt to actually fix a problem. Or are you just interested in. Looking good.
And I actually think that this is also what we're seeing with the current it's real Gaza conflict, because there are not many. , real, , pleasant solutions to the current geopolitical issue in that region. And if you actually implemented most of the left wing solutions. You're going to deal with. [00:54:00] A scale of death and oppression in the region that is. Astronomical.
Malcolm Collins: I love you to death. You're amazing and you are so understanding of other people and cultures. Even when they wish that we were dead.
As I'm sure If they choose
Simone Collins: Snark, I'm for them. It doesn't matter. If the Snark
Malcolm Collins: channels cover us, they're gonna be like, Oh my god, their children should be dead! Snark channels already I'm gonna say they should have never been born, but there's no difference.
Simone Collins: No, they'll We always know what they say,
How can you slap? F k. F k. F k. How can she slap? F k. How did you
Simone Collins: How could they be so cruel to their children?
They don't love their children.
Malcolm Collins: That's what they say. That's what they say. How could they slap
Simone Collins: How do they slap and how dare she have her baby on the screen? That's going to be a big one. Yeah. How could they practice corporal punishment? How could they not make their house incredibly warm during the winter?
How could they have so many kids if they can't? I don't know. I really don't know. I am running out of things, but it's usually those things. Oh, and they put too much on their kids [00:55:00] because they, expect things of them and encourage them to.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, how dare they have expectations?
Intergenerational cultural expectations. And that's another thing that gets me. And we'll probably do a full episode on this, but I'll just end it with this where people are like, how dare you say that people owe their ancestors anything, right? I'm like, if somebody gave you a hundred dollars and said, you go, what do I owe you for this?
And they're like just pass on the goodwill, you'd be, and then you took that money and you spent it on drugs and pornography right? Like just something to totally selfish. You are a bad and vile person. I am glad that people like you won't exist in the future.
If somebody makes not, doesn't give you a hundred dollars, they make enormous sacrifices to give you life. Life and they say, and you say, what do I owe you? And they go, all you owe me is to pass this on, pay it forward. And you're like fuck that. I'm going to spend it on, drugs and sex. You're a vile person and I'm glad that your cultural and genetic descendants won't exist in the future.[00:56:00]
So lovely. Do you disagree with that statement, Simone? That's very much a snarky
Simone Collins: I just say, actually, there are some times where Jen gets really pissed about things that the other side says. And she takes on a tone that reminds me a lot of you when you get the same level of piss. So I'm just like, Oh, it's great.
It's good. I, my whole thing is what happens, people who choose not to represent the trans community. Their culture in the future will not inherit the future. We will inherit the future theoretically, if our kids thrive and flourish, and I hope that they do.
Malcolm Collins: All right.
Love you so much.
Simone Collins: I love you too, gorgeous.
You're not messing up. You're doing a great job. Were you able to get the pocket thing I got you on your belt, or have you still not wearing it?
Simone Collins: It doesn't fit under these aprons, and that's the trouble. But once I figure out how to deal with it under these [00:57:00] aprons, I'll
Malcolm Collins: do it. Okay. I just want you to be happy.
Simone Collins: You're the best.
Malcolm Collins: You're the best.
Simone Collins: No, Amy's the best. Our kids are the best. All of them are the best. The best.
Malcolm Collins: Every one of our kids is like so amazing in their own way. I'm really excited for them.
Simone Collins: True story. I'm crazy about them. Okay, I'm gonna go get her and then I'll be right in. Oops! .
The Fundie Snark To Religious Extremist Pipeline